Maintaining Your Transmission

Why should we service automatic transmissions?

• They are complex assemblies. They incorporate gears, shafts, pumps, precision valves, solenoids (electric valves) and many other precision components.
• Transmissions are expensive.
• Driving habits and use varies.
• We tend to keep our vehicles longer. 100,000 miles was very high mileage in early years. Today's vehicles last much longer and 200,00-300,000 service life is normal now.
• We drive more miles per year then we did 20 years ago! We are a society "on the go!"

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Snowplowing & Your Transmission: What You Need to Know

Plowing snow can be the most severe operation a transmission can operate. Sometimes we use the phrase "pushing a ton of snow", but it can be an understatement! We measured snow by weight and volume (varies with temperature, e.g. light snow vs. heavy snow) and its quite common to find 3,000 or more pounds of snow be pushed by a snow plow. That's a lot of work! Work equates to heat, a big factor in transmissions. The harder we work the plow truck, the more heat we generate. Even the best transmission cooling systems can't keep up!

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4-Wheel Drive Concerns

There are numerous 4-wheel drive systems; many are sophisticated and automatically controlled but basic rules apply to all. Not just plow and work truck's, but SUV's also need to pay attention to tire size. All the tire's must be the same diameter, notice we did not say the same size! Measuring tire size can be tricky. We use a "stagger gauge", like they use on race cars, but you can use a level to find the top of the tire relative to the ground. With the vehicle on flat ground, measure from the ground to the level. The tire's should be within a 1/4 inch (not very much) of each other.

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Front Wheel Drive Concerns

Winter driving conditions can be hazardous for front wheel drive vehicles. The problem occurs when you get stuck and you try freeing yourself by revving up the engine which causes the wheels to spin. Without getting to technical, when only one wheel spins for too long a period, this causes the spider gears to spin at excessive speed on the differential pin. When this happens the gears can get galled to the differential pin which breaks the roll pin holding it in, then the differential pin flies out and breaks the case of the transmission.

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